An Editorial On The Downing Street Memo

Memo Is No 'Smoking Gun'

July 07, 2005

Since it was first published in the British press in May, the so- called Downing Street memo has generated debate about the Bush administration's intentions of going to war.

Critics of the Iraq war have seized on the document -- minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior government leadership -- as proof that the Bush administration was hell-bent for war even as it publicly sought to bring Saddam Hussein to heel through diplomacy.

War critics have focused on a section of the document in which a British spy agency chief, identified as C, discussed a recent visit to Washington. "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the spy chief reported. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around policy." British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw agreed that it seemed Bush "had made up his mind to take military action."

War was clearly an option at that time, as the British discussed. But remember: This was the British version of the events then forming in Washington. U.S. media outlets at the time were also reporting on the growing possibility of war, a war that would not occur for eight months as the United States and British exhausted diplomatic efforts through the United Nations.

It's hard to find a smoking gun in the Downing Street memo, unless you're intent on finding one. At least two subsequent events argue that, contrary to the spy chief's assessment, Bush in July 2002 did not see war as inevitable.

Four months later, in November, the U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 1441, sponsored by the United States, which required Iraq to submit to weapons inspections and disclose any elements of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs. We have long argued that war could well have been averted if the United Nations had been willing to enforce its resolution.

Six months after the Downing Street memo, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix reported in detail on Iraq's failure to cooperate with inspectors. If Iraq had cooperated, it would have defused any U.S. intention to go to war. Iraq did not.

The memo, and other documents obtained by Michael Smith, a defense writer in Britain, do show us something. They show us how governments prepare to go to war.

These documents provide some of the words and thoughts of the players involved in the Iraq crisis. The documents show us the strain on policy-makers, give us a look backstage as British officials report on meetings with key U.S. officials.

The documents show decisions were not made in a vacuum. They came in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Straw noted in a March 2002 memo that had those attacks not occurred, "it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq."

The documents also laid out the options policy-makers faced: whether to proceed with the policy of containing Iraq through economic sanctions or to topple Hussein's regime. In hindsight, from these memos, a careful reader can piece together how and why the U.S. and British governments came together on the decision to go to war.

"In sum, despite the considerable difficulties, the use of overriding force in a ground campaign is the only option that we can be confident will remove Saddam and bring Iraq back into the international community," was the conclusion of a 10-page options paper from March 2002 -- months before the Downing Street memo -- prepared by the Overseas and Defense Secretariat of the Cabinet Office.

That paper weighed two possibilities for post-Saddam Iraq: rule by a Sunni military strongman or a representative democratic government. The paper acknowledged that for a democratic government to survive, "it would require the U.S. and others to commit to nation building for many years."

And that's where we are today -- building a representative democratic government for Iraq.